The danger exists with internal combustion engines with a cylinder cutoff for a cylinder to mistakenly be cut off, which actually should be fired, or for a cylinder to mistakenly not be cut off, which should be cut off. A faulty operating condition of this kind is typically detected by means of a misfire detection. A misfire detection of this kind is, for example, described in the Japanese patent JP 2004-100486. When detecting the aforementioned error using the misfire detection, it is, however, not possible to distinguish a cylinder, which has mistakenly not been cut off; or one, which has mistakenly been cut off, from a typical combustion misfire.
The task of the invention at hand is, therefore, to specify a method and a device, which can distinguish an error in the cylinder cutoff from a combustion misfire.